According to researchers, the asteroid Bennu contains the elements necessary for life. The samples were collected and returned to Earth as part of the OSIRS-REx mission, led by the University of Arizona.
Two recently published papers demonstrate how critical it was for the OSIRIS-REx mission to actually travel to the asteroid to collect samples.
The amino acids and other chemical compounds would have been contaminated by the earth’s surface if they had studied a normal meteorite.
Another study discovered that salty remnants of water left on the asteroid would not have survived entering Earth’s atmosphere.
Dante Lauretta, a UA professor, led the mission and told Arizona Public Media that the studies revealed all of the ingredients for life.
“So basically the building blocks of life were in an ocean in the ancient solar system before the Earth even existed, and the samples that OSIRIS-REx returned have recorded that history,” according to Lauretta.
He went on to say that the samples show that the building blocks of life were spread throughout the early solar system.
“There have been hints that meteorites could have contained the letters of the genetic code. But because we went to the asteroid, we returned it clean and pristine. “We can confidently say that these came from outer space,” Lauretta said.
The findings were published in the journals Nature and Nature Astronomy. They found no evidence of life.
